Tag Archives: Scaramucci

Every week I think it can’t get any worse and it does. I’m talking about our southern neighbours of course. Just how low can it go? Well, it seems that there is no bottom to the ignorance and depravity of the Trump administration.

First, we have the attacks against the transgender community. If people are law abiding and civil, what they are or what they do is their business. And do normal, sensible people really care where others pee? I remember being in a hotel in the 1960’s in some small community in Guatemala. Down the hall were two doors – one marked damas and the other caballeros. They both lead into the same large room with cubicles and basins lining either side of the room. That would likely cause a stroke in South (or is it North) Carolina in 2017.

But then, to top off that bit of idiocy, we have the new communications director for the White House who has no idea how to communicate suggesting that another official is a fu@@@ paranoid schizophrenic. Words fail me at this total display of ignorance, indecency and lack of civility.

I’ve just finished reading White Trash The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America and I have to say that the author got it wrong. White trash extends into the White House.

Like most Canadians, I have friends and relatives in the US and they are intelligent decent people with whom, mostly, I share similar values. But those sensible, decent, civil people need to stand up and do whatever they can to get their country back and to help it move into the 21st Century. And lest we forget, that includes health care for your citizens. No one in civilized society anywhere can fathom how you can argue about the need to provide citizens with health.

Before you suggest that no one should throw stones, let me explain that other countries have grown. Racism and incivility exists everywhere and probably always will but most countries have gone beyond that being the norm and deal with it when it occurs. Canada’s record with Indigenous people is not very impressive but efforts are being made. The overt racism towards others and homophobia is no longer the norm. Just look at the minorities in the current Canadian cabinet or the Sikh with a full beard and turban running for the leadership of a national political party.

In Hamilton, posters promoting Fringe Festival plays about feminist and LGBQT topics were defaced with biblical anti-feminist and anti-gay graffiti. That was denounced in social media and by civic officials and festival officials have put rainbow coloured stickers over the graffiti saying “All for love. And love for all”.

I lived in England for a year during the Enoch Powell era when racism and anti-immigrant sentiment was very strong. Today, I marvel at the English cultural mosaic that is reflected in British TV mysteries and the BBC News. The vote for Brexit may have been a bit of a setback but gone are the days when BBC newsreaders and journalists had to be white and all talked with that upper class Oxbridge accent. Not anymore.

Countries evolve and also regress as liberal Germany did in the rise of Hitler. It is time for the decent Americans I know to actively work to take back their country and to evolve. I’m waiting for US organizations like NAMI, Mental Health America and others to speak up and and denounce the obscene insult to people with mental illness and hopefully, they will by the time this gets released on Monday. I am writing it on Friday.